“Will you send to me if anything happens? I can get over in a few hours by boat,” he said suddenly.
Mrs Bush tried to smile. “What should happen? And yet,” her eyes grew suspiciously soft, “you came once before, when I had not sent, on the morning of the great fight in the plaza here, and saved us all.”
Basil flushed. “So you will send?” he persisted.
She held out her hand. “Yes, I will send—if necessary.”
Then he hurried after his men, and in due course marched them into Calocan, where he took possession of the old barracks of the Guardia Civil, in which the Spanish corporal had lived for many years. The people of Calocan had hewn down and burned the new gallows, which he had caused to be erected a few months before; and when he made his first tour of inspection round the town, the men shambled away, cursing under their breath, whilst some of the women shouted “Hangman.” But Basil did not trouble, remembering who it was he had hanged—Juan Vagas, whose share of the plunder of Igut was to have been Mrs Bush. His men, on the other hand, did not take matters so quietly, and there were many bruised heads and sore backs in Calocan before an understanding was reached.
Before Basil had been at Calocan a week, the old Spanish priest died, and there came to replace him a young American, Father Doyle. As the latter was the only other white man in the place—unless one included, as no sane man would do, Messrs Lippmann & Klosky, who now occupied old Don José’s premises, opposite the site of the gallows—there presently sprang up a great friendship between the Constabulary officer and the padre, and, although they were of different creeds, the priest soon learnt of the great secret, or rather the great sorrow, in the other’s life, and, being broad-minded, sympathised with him deeply, which, possibly, like Basil’s infatuation itself, was most wrong and improper.
Father Doyle had been in Calocan a couple of months when the chance of his lifetime came. Probably most men, nine out of ten perhaps, have one great chance, sooner or later; and yet it is doubtful whether one in ten realises when that chance has come, and whether one in a hundred profits by it to the full. Some are so amazed that they rush off to discuss it with their friends, or stay at home and ponder over it, until the psychological moment has passed; others are too dull, or too heart-broken, to understand that it has come at all, having often got beyond the stage when hope is a living thing; whilst yet others are suddenly filled with a blind self-confidence which ruins everything.
Father Doyle’s chance came in the form of a message from Felizardo, brought to Calocan by no less a person than old Don Juan Ramirez, the nephew of that Don José Ramirez whose junior clerk Felizardo had once been. Dolores Lasara was dying, and Felizardo wanted a priest—a white priest, not a mestizo like the padre at Igut, or like Father Pablo, whom Felizardo himself had slain in the house of the Teniente of San Polycarpio.
Don Juan found Father Doyle in the old barracks, dining with Basil Hayle, and delivered his message at once, adding: “I have a launch waiting to take you as far as Katubig. A Scotchman, John Mackay, a hemp-planter, will be waiting there to go up with us.”
Father Doyle, who had risen from his seat, looked from Don Juan to Basil Hayle, a question in his eyes. “But this Felizardo——” he began.